SHOCK VALUE OF TRUMP IMMIGRATION THREATS

Introduction

Mr. Trump did not design his immigration policies to create a more perfect Union. His threats of mass deportations and revoking birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants are complex issues that, if implemented, will amount to shooting ourselves in the foot.

Our solidified bases accept proposals we do not question because we want to win. Most of us have no full knowledge of the implications, effectiveness, psychological impact, and broader socio-economic, legal, and other consequences of Mr. Trump’s immigration policy proposals.

Implications of Mass Deportation

His mass deportation executive order might succeed if he focuses on immigrants with final orders of deportation who number about 1.2 million. Those without such orders who number about 10 million would mean getting such an order against them, one by one.

Americans accept that mass deportations are needed because Mr. Trump and others exaggerate illegal entries by including failed attempts. It is how he gets to between 15 to 20 million undocumented immigrants he claims are here and 10 million he claims entered under the Biden administration.

It would be difficult to deport more than a few million under the best scenario of a four-year term if immigrants just waited him out, hoping he runs out of money and time. That often stops the mass deportation process. Even those he manages to put in deportation camps might consider three square meals a day in a deportation camp preferable to suffering starvation and the other things they fled in their countries.

But Congress could just end its requiring a deportation order before deporting an immigrant. The House might pass such an amendment but the Senate’s filibuster would assure its defeat.

Mr. Trump loves talking about the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. He seems to miss that we have used it only three times in its 226-year history. He wants to use it to call up the military to arrest undocumented immigrants which runs headlong into the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, banning the military from policing civilians.

It would be legal for him to use the military for logistical support of ICE. The 6,000 ICE agents who get bogged down daily in paperwork would be free to arrest immigrants if the military took up the paperwork. Similarly, the military can aid transporting detainees and building deportation camps.

Once in custody, each immigrant’s country must accept them back before he could send them over. There are countries we are not talking to at all and some with which we have so-so relations.

The window for getting countries to accept their citizens back is 90 days once we have them in detention. If an immigrant refuses to cooperate in getting papers from a home government, he can hold them longer. But he cannot hold those he cannot prove able to deport beyond 180 days.

If Mr. Trump’s advisors know these legal and practical obstacles, it means that the enthusiasm the mass deportation threats embody is about something different from achieving mass deportations. Much like terrorism, these threats work through their psychological effects.

Shock, fear and the disruption of the sense of security and normalcy for immigrants, and the media attention raids would garner, make these threats appealing as a way to convince immigrants to depart voluntarily. But past mass deportation threats did not cause a substantial number of undocumented immigrants to leave voluntarily.

Psychological Impact

One guaranteed psychological impact of these threats is deportation stress. It includes PTSD, extreme anxiety, and depression. While undocumented immigrants and their families are on that frontline, the descendants of many generations of citizens would not be spared of vicarious suffering.

For children, toxic stress that can stunt brain development is a risk from deportation stress. They may act out, express anger, suffer from sleep and eating disorders, withdraw, or even become suicidal or self-injuring if parents face deportations. Others just hearing these threats might suffer sympathy fatigue, the kind caregivers witnessing their charges’ suffering experience.

Children are not good at figuring out that adults threatening danger are not directing it at them. They can suffer from constantly hearing that parents will be taken away because children suffer when parents are threatened even if the threat is not carried out. It is psychologically and emotionally abusive to force children to hear these threats constantly.

Operation Wagon Train in 2006, under George W. Bush, netted 1,300 about 1,000 ICE officers arrested in one day in mid-December from meat packing plants in six states. Children stranded at schools, daycare centers, and other places because parents did not pick them up caused community uproar. The NIMBY effect caused the Bush administration to back off.

That elephant still sits in the middle of the room as we all pretend we get nothing from illegal immigration. If we enjoy low grocery and other prices, and businesses are raking in profits for their shareholders from this new slave labor, it is impossible to end illegal immigration.

But the problem, even for government officials enforcing mass deportation raids, can turn personal. If they violate Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act by abusing official government power, they will incur money damages they, not their employers, must pay. It stopped the terrorism White government officials kept visiting on Blacks by resorting to official government positions during the Civil Rights Movement. A lien on one’s personal property from a court award under Section 1983 will nix that bad behavior.

ICE’s Operation Return to Sender in 2006 focused on immigrants with final orders of deportation as Mr. Trump's advisors say their first stop will be. But that 2006 effort resulted in the Argueta v. ICE lawsuit. The defendants, ICE agents, supervisors, and policy makers, settled with the plaintiffs who accused them of constitutional violations related to illegal, warrantless searches on homes in New Jersey without their occupants’ consent.

Economic Impact

Mass deportation has socio-economic consequences. The cost of the deportation itself is one thing, in hundreds of billions of dollars. The other impact is on our labor force suffering deficits from a declining birth rate.

Already, there were 7.7 million unfilled skilled positions in the labor force experiencing a declining replacement rate in summer 2024. That gap awaits another 8.3 million positions undocumented immigrants present at the end of 2022 would leave if deported. Those workers’ jobs affect others, meaning rising unemployment. Rising prices from product shortages would add to a rise in import prices from Mr. Trump’s tariffs. Departing undocumented immigrants who created jobs would leave with their investments meaning even higher job loss.

They paid almost $97 billion in taxes in 2023. They would pay an added $40.2 billion in taxes if we gave them legal status, according to the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy. The Social Security and Medicare funds would be without those payroll withholdings.

Undocumented immigrants contributed to the $669 billion that private individuals in the U.S. sent to low-to-middle-income countries in 2023. These remittances prevent the migration of those who get that survival money and will head to the U.S. without that financing.

Constitutional and Legal Impact

Simply uncapping his Sharpie may seem to Mr. Trump how to strike birthright citizenship from the Constitution. He believes he can undo decades of litigation which have enforced the interpretation of the ratification of the 14th Amendment to give birthright citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil with the stroke of a pen.

Birthright citizenship is a constitutional right he can only remove constitutionally through an amendment to which a two-thirds majority in Congress agrees. He will have Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, but only 218 of the 290 votes he needs in the House and 53 of the 67 votes he needs in the Senate to pass an amendment. He can count 23 reliably Republican-voting states in his corner but will need 15 more to reach the threshold of 38 states needed to ratify an amendment under Article V of the Constitution. In a century, the Equal Rights Amendment has not achieved that goal, for example.

But even with such amendment secured, he would face challenges by the children who got birthright citizenship while their undocumented immigrants were in legal status as students, visitors or others and just overstayed visas to be illegal. One even imagines fights over one parent being undocumented the other is not.

Copycat amendments would try to match the 50 nations which have sanguinis or ‘right of blood’ citizenship. Nothing would stop efforts to restrict citizenship to persons with an ancestor who was a citizen at U.S. independence. Ridiculous and far fetched, you say? Well, until Mr. Trump put it in play, it was ridiculous to challenge birthright citizenship in the 21st century.

Conclusion

Mass deportation and the revocation of birthright citizenship are complex and multifaceted policies. They have support from certain segments which, were they with deep understandings of their significant implications, might withdraw support.

J.D. Vance argued that women without children, who own cats, had no stake in America’s future. Mr. Trump who is 78 may think that because he has only a little time left to live he has not real stake in a future America. Americans cannot trust that he intends a more perfect Union through these immigration policies that are potentially damaging to our economy's stability.